Event Videos — Literary Lights
Literary Lights 2025: Featuring Nicole Haroutunian - October 19, 2025
Featured Speaker: Nicole Haroutunian Olivia Katrandjian Date: October 19, 2025 Virtual event The October edition of Literary Lights 2025 featured Nicole Haroutunian, author of Choose This Now, in conversation with writer, journalist and IALA founder Olivia Katrandjian. Inseparable friends Val-and-Tal are used to making their decisions together. But what happens when their choices become their own? CHOOSE THIS NOW, a novel-in-stories, illuminates the small moments that shape their lives across nearly twenty years. On Val’s 21st birthday—which falls on Halloween—a sudden act of violence interrupts a longed-for kiss. This unfinished moment haunts Val year after year until she materializes in...
Literary Lights 2025: Featuring Aram Mrjoian - September 20, 2025
AILA's Literary Lights 2025 reading series returns with an event featuring Aram Mrjoian, editor and author of Waterline, in conversation with award-winning writer Chris McCormick.
Literary Lights 2025: Featuring Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian ~ Saturday, June 28, 2025
Our June edition of Literary Lights 2025 reading series features Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, professor, curator and author of Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, in conversation with award-winning writer Nancy Kricorian.
Literary Lights 2025 Launch: Featuring Wasafiri Armenian Issue Editors and Contributors ~ Saturday, February 15, 2025
Highlighting the launch of our reading series, Literary Lights 2025, featuring Wasafiri Magazine’s special “Armenia(n)s – Elevation” issue editors and contributors.
LITERARY LIGHTS: Lory Bedikian and Brian Turner ~ Saturday, September 21, 2024
The final installment of the reading series, Literary Lights 2024, features Lory Bedikian, author of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry winner, Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body. Bedikian was joined by award-winning poet, essayist and professor, Brian Turner.
LITERARY LIGHTS: The Palace of Forty Pillars ~ Saturday, May 4, 2024
Wry, tender, and formally innovative, Armen Davoudian’s debut poetry collection, The Palace of Forty Pillars, tells the story of a self estranged from the world around him as a gay adolescent, an Armenian in Iran, and an immigrant in America.
Literary Lights: The Prospectors
Selected by Barnes & Noble as their book-of-the-month for October 2023, Ariel Djanikian’s newly-released The Prospectors is a sweeping rags-to-riches story of survival and greed across American history following a family transformed by the Klondike Gold Rush.
Literary Lights: All the Ways We Lied
Literary Lights is a monthly reading series organized by the IALA, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center. The series features new works of literature by Armenian authors. Each event—held online—will feature a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members.
Literary Lights: American Wildflowers with Dr. Susan Barba
In the spirit of the season, Literary Lights featured Susan Barba, editor of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide. Barba will be joined by Dr. Jesse S. Arlen.
Literary Lights: We Are All Armenian ~ Part II
We Are All Armenian is a groundbreaking collection of personal essays–by established and emerging Armenian voices–exploring the multilayered realities of life in the Armenian diaspora.